"AKC" type registry for reptiles?

[kathylove]

Breeders have long discussed the need to have some standardized parameters (and names!) for the "ideal" specimen of various morphs of corns and other commonly bred herps. At least two people I know of have tried to start such a registry, but gave up when they found out how much work it is. If we actually had standards such as dog breeds have, keepers and breeders could compare their animals to the standard to gauge their breeding success. Of course, in order to be of any use, such standards would have to have broad acceptance with many breeders willing to accept a particular standard of "perfection" for a particular morph.

If successful, there would be lots of benefits, especially in the long term. Once accepted, hobbyists could buy pedigreed animals with known bloodlines, het traits, and purity. Such pedigreed animals would probably be of more value to future breeders, and thus more expensive than "mutts", even though mutts make great pets too! Of course, founder stock would only be as good as the animals accepted in the beginning. But after a few generations of breeding only registered stock, lines would become known just like in horse breeding or dog breeding, etc. In addition, the shows and other trappings of domestication would help prove to the public and government agencies that our industry is not really much different than any other domestic animal breeding hobby / industry, and deserving of the same respect. Not to mention that I could answer all of the emails I get about "I just bought a neon lime ghost pearl corn and want to know what it really is?" with just "sorry, it is not a recognized corn morph - you will have to ask the breeder what he thinks it is". Well, I guess that is already what I DO tell them, but it would mean more if there was a recognized registry to back it up.

OK - the point of this post (at last, lol!) A new registry has been set up, primarliy for bearded dragons at first (because that is what she breeds). The organizer has already joined with Tony Cueto to start hosting judged reptile shows at his shows, starting in Tampa in April. She has asked me about the possibility of enlisting a group of cornsnake breeders to write up (just a couple to start) breed standards for some cornsnake morphs. She has spent a lot of time with AKC people and other domestic animal registries to see what we can or can't use of their models. These standards would be written a lot like the breed standards for dogs, etc. Because our morphs are just color and pattern (unlike dogs), we could have one standard for all cornsnakes about their health, size, body shape, etc. Then additional descriptions for color and pattern of each type. We would need some discussion, then somebody to write, then bring it back and discuss it until we have a consensus. Seems like many morphs would not be too difficult as most agree what they should look like. But others coud be more problematical with differing opinions. Maybe start with the easier ones first?? Serp's book would be a good beginning point on many types, and go from there. He even started to organize a naming committee once (quite a while ago), but I don't know what became of it. Perhaps Chuck / Serp and those people could help here? Seems like this time, some of the (organizational) work has already been done, so all we have to do is come up with a couple of standards to start with.

Yes, there would be a lot of difficulties and disagreement, but it sure would be nice EVENTUALLY when it was finished and accepted. Please check out the registry website here: http://cmpregistry.com/index.php and get a discussion going on what you think about the idea and whether anyone here thinks they could help make it work.

THANKS! (Whew! My fingers hurt after all that!! Sorry for the book length, but it took a lot to explain it all.)

 

[dionythicus]

I think it would be terrific. I hope it can be done.

 

[spook]

It's a good idea, but where would morphs fit into these standards?

 

[DAND]

Coming soon...

THE AMERICAN CORN CLUB

I've seen a discussion that was brought up about trying the same with Boids. I think it would be great if something like this was done.

 

[Serpwidgets]

I think there's a great deal of value to be found in pedigrees, and knowing the ancestry of a given snake. I know that someone here is (or at least has been) planning a registry specifically for cornsnakes. I'm 100% for it.

But at this point in time, IMO it's too early to have any kind of breeding standard for specific morphs. We haven't even scratched the surface on the variety that could exist in any of the existing genetic-based morphs. What I mean is, if there were standards stating what an amel should look like (other than simply being homozygous for amelanism) then everyone would have been discouraged from breeding candycanes, sunglows, and reverse Okeetees. Then all amels would look like: uke02: hehe

 

[kathylove]

Hi Chuck!

I was just about to email you to ask you to join in.

Actually, what I had in mind was to start with some of the selectively bred amels. I think some of those could be the easiest to describe. There could even be sublistings. For instance, many dog breeds have smooth coat and rough coat. We might have regular pattern and zigzag/aztec in most types, so we could go for the extremes of normal patterns and fused patterns, trying to eliminate the in-betwen, not really normal and not really zizags. Or we might have a sub-category of frosted types. Seems like it would be fairly easy to describe an ideal candycane. Everyone wants as white of a background as possible. And an intensely colored, solid red (some like orange) blotch. If we decided to have a frosted category, then we would look for the one with the most frosting in the blotches. Seems like we could have fun if people could actually compete in shows to see whose candycane (or amel okeetee or creamsicle or whatever) could come closest to whatever the community decides is the "ideal" for that selectively bred type. Of course, breeders are not forced to breed for that type if they don't want to participate. But the idea would be that the standard "ideal" animal is what most breeders and hobbyists want anyway, so the animal closest to that "perfect" specimen is the one that most people will want to buy anyway.

As I see it, we (breeders and buyers of future breeding stock) do this anyway, (in our heads) - trying to breed (or choose stock) to a standard that MOST of us will find appealing. But since there are no written standards, the beginners are kind of left to figure it out for themselves. If they wanted a black miniature poodle, they could go to the breed standard to compare their potential purchase to it, or they can just ignore it and buy whatever appeals to them. But at least they have a choice.

What do you think?

 

[Buschjs]

I agree, it needs to be done and I hope it is successful. How would this actually be implemented, would each animal come with a certificate indicating their ancestry?

 

[kathylove]

Please check out the registry website here: http://cmpregistry.com/index.php to see more about how the techinical aspects would be handled. I am sure it will evolve as it goes.

The nice thing is that we wouldn't have to work out those aspects - it's already in place. We just have to describe a couple of standards and get the ball rolling with corns. Others will work on ball python morphs, dragons, etc, and on how the certificates would work and putting on the shows, getting judges, etc. If the majority of corn breeders didn't like the way it is handled after a fair trial (don't know how long it would be), and we couldn't get needed changes accomplished, then I suppose we /they would just stop supporting it and it would eventually cease to mean much to other corn keepers /breeders.

 

[Menhir]

I think this is a great idea for line bred morphs!
There is a whole lot of confusion in europe about line bred morphs - most of the time because they have better sounding names than "amel" or "anery".

I think there is a whole acceptance for unwritten laws in these morphs. There are also well known sites/books that specify these laws, but in the end, there is nothing like a standart.
We often see this with our lexikon (=encyclopedia), after a while, most of the peolpe agree to the explanations we give cause they see that they are internationally accepted. But there are still breeders that explain things to newbies just as they like and the argument "don't care what 20 year old boys write on their homepage" seems to work :angry01:
So I'm hoping that the whole stuff works and we'd be able to simply expose the "liars" by linking to an accepted standart.

Btw. I hope you don't try to discuss every detail. With dogs, the whole thing grew for years to what we have today, we won't be able to fit every animal as it should be, we won't be able to be aware of every frosted, ziggyzaggy, atzeci, half atzec, smile on the head snake - thats imho.
I think we should start with simple and clear morphs and then devide it into subspecies, when there are several animals or lines that are different enough to be mentioned extra. But that should be a process, not a whole wall of things to do, that we build in front of us before the whole thing can start.

Divide and conquer won't fit for that - I think top down and slowly split will be the best way... some kind of evolution :nyah:

Greetings

 

[kathylove]

Exactly!

Yes, there IS already a lot of acceptance for many types, especially just the simple recessive traits and combos. And there are lots of breeders who pick out names for unproven pretty animals that may be the same as already named morphs. But those recessives are easy- two generations and you have the trait! More numbers to work for combos, of course. But as Serp said, we don't want just a mix of "general" amels or other simple or combined traits. We want the extreme examples that people find beautiful. The ones that take many generations of tweaking to perfect, and that can never be completely "perfect" - we always want "just a little more" (or less) of this color or that pattern. That is what makes it a fun, ongoing project, and can pique the interest of the beginner hobbyist / breeder as well. That is why I found leucistic Tx. rats boring after a while - once it is pure white, you are finished - what else can you do besides produce more of the same?

I think if we picked just 2 or 3 long established, popular types to work on (maybe candycane, alb. okeetee, and sunglow?) then we could attack the problem one little part at a time and see how it worked before going on to some more difficult to agree on types.

 

[Susan]

A registry would be great, but coming up with the standards is going to be difficult because of the extreme variations seen is most morphs. Starting with the selectively bred varieties (such as the candy cane and sunglow amels) is a good idea, but where do you go from there? Try to come up with a standard for anery A or ghost with all the color ranges seen. The pattern morphs may work fairly well since an ideal pattern can probably be agreed upon (for example - a zigzag or aztec whose pattern is seen along the entire length of the snake).

And something else that needs to be considered...at what age can you register a cornsnake? As a hatchling?...but you can't guarantee what the colors will be as an adult. As an adult?...but when do you consider a corn as an adult...2 yrs? 3 yrs? And does it have to be a proven breeder before it can be registered?

And say you get an ideal specimen, register it, win many awards at shows, but when breeding time comes, it is a poor breeder or the offspring produced never measure up to standard? And the reverse can also be true...the ugliest specimen may produce 30 ideal hatchlings in every clutch...but these hatchlings may not be registerable because it's parent can't be registered.

Alot of thought is going to have to go into determining what can and cannot be registered.

 

[Menhir]

I think if we picked just 2 or 3 long established, popular types to work on (maybe candycane, alb. okeetee, and sunglow?) then we could attack the problem one little part at a time and see how it worked before going on to some more difficult to agree on types.

I totally agree on that - you seem to know better words for that than me :licklips:
If you can nail down some kind of main morph, you can start to devide it into finer granular distinctions and standarts.
I think of something like a hierachical tree - The genetic "homo" morph is the root - that is where it starts. And then it goes down into nodes e.g. for amel: sunglow(no white),reverse ok (bright white borders - orange beackground) candycane (white background, red blotches) as 3 "extremes". These can have nodes themselfes or simply be leaves cause there is nothing finer yet.
You would then easily be able to clasify your animal just by traversing the path through the tree and look for the requirements (no white...).
With that pattern, you can easily manage the morph thing.

Once you've classified your animal, you can watch for the specific, special standarts in that morph and see how well it fits them.

That would be easier, especially for newbies. Cause we don't buy a rottweiler or pit bull where we already know the "race" - normally, we should prove if the thing we bought fits the standarts that are written down and as we see in our lexikon - if people just read "candycane" "red candycane" "reverseokeetee""sunglow" and so on - they aren't able to classify their animals properly.

@Susan you have all these things you said also in dogs, cats and so on. That is sad, but very true - BUT: These are problems, that we can't solve.
I don't think it's good just to think "oh, but we can't solve that and that and that - but we solve the standart thing".
By now - we neither solve that, that and that - nor the morph standarts. :spinner:

 

[kathylove]

If you look at how the breed associations work for horses, dogs, etc, you can see how they worked some of those same problems out. They all register babies, and you usually can't see exactly what the quality of a baby is in most species. But once several generations have been registered, you can get an idea of the quality of the bloodlines after many progeny have arisen from that line. Breeders already have a feel for that in their bloodlines, if they are good, longterm breeders who know their lines well. But no matter how good the bloodline, you will get some poor examples from that line. They will still be registered, but probably won't win any prizes at shows! If it goes the way of dog shows, then eventually you will see ancestors with "champion" next to their names, and the more champions in the line, the greater chances that a high percentage of that line will be champion quality. Not a for sure thing, of course, just increases the chances. There would also be disqualifications for shows, I would imagine, like kinked backs. So yes, the kinked baby might be registered because nobody is going to come to your home and check your clutch. But that baby would be disqualified from competing in a show.

The way the founding stock worked in some new horse breeds (way back in the '60s and '70s when I was into horses) was that the stud book was open for a certain amount of time. If the horse had the right look (say a paint horse that conformed to the colors, pattern, and other specifications), then it coud be registered and so could its offspring. They might also allow other established breeds to register (like quarter horses, for example) to get the right body type. But eventually the stud book would be "closed" and no new founder stock could be registered. From that time onward, only progeny of registered animals could be registered themselves. I don't know if that is exactly how this would work, but it has worked with other animals. It would take a lot of time before the kinks are worked out, and enough generations were registered to make it mean anything. But a journey of a thousand miles...(you know the rest!)

 

[kathylove]

"if people just read "candycane" "red candycane" "reverseokeetee""sunglow" and so on - they aren't able to classify their animals properly."

Good point! Many beginners have difficulty understanding the difference between the simple recessive traits and the selectively bred morphs. A "tree" classification in the breed standards would help them understand better.

 

[Joejr14]

Phew this is interesting.

Are we talking like an online 'book' of registered snakes/breeders? If so, which I think would be the only practical way, that would take a lot of work--a ton in fact.

I think it's a great idea with promise, but the workload in making something like that happen---especially for the big breeders just doesn't really seem to be possible, no?

 

[Hurley]

I like the idea of a corn snake registry. I think the pedigree/lineage info would be very helpful in tracking lines or researching back into a line. I would think locality people would especially be interested in this.

I was perusing the site and so far, it looks very professional, although there isn't much there yet. The thing I think they have done is priced themselves out of getting very many corn breeders involved. If I were to register all of our breeders and just this year's clutches, I'd be in it for a couple thousand dollars at least. I've got a couple small clutches that would cost $8-9 per hatchling to register for them...and not all hatchlings live to be sold or held back as we all know. I certainly won't make that back to even pay for the registration.

Their fee schedule closely matches the AKC and AQHA and some of the other registration groups I've been involved with...but those are working with animals that produce one offspring a year to a litter of 6-7 average. When you are selling a colt for hundreds to thousands of dollars and only get one per year from mom...$25 isn't bad. If they really wanted to get the corn numbers in, they'd open the book with significant price breaks for getting as many breeders to register their stock as possible. You need numbers to make it work. Otherwise all pedigrees will have so many holes and branches that don't trace, that the effort is invalidated.

It would be nice to get a corn registry started that simply gets them identified and numbered to start the lines of "registered" corns with traceable histories. As quickly as corn morphs are happening right now, and as quickly as their prices drop...who is going to pay the $500 to "register" a new morph every year when most of them are just new genetic combos of known genes?

I would love to participate in getting a registry going for corns, get my animals all registered, help get the trend established, but there is no way I can afford to register our meager collection of 100ish corns (at $10 minimum a registration) plus even just this year's clutches (~25 at $25/each + $1 per egg) to even get established.

Minimally that is:
$1,000+ to register the breeders....
$625 minimum in clutch fees
+ $200 for 200 hatchlings
That is the bare minimum and probably under estimated...
I'm sorry, but I just don't have the $1825 + to get started.

How about you, Kathy? Your collection has got to be bigger than mine?


And then if we have to pay $500 per morph to get them registered...since corns aren't even on the list...

Good luck to them, I think it's a great thought, but the fee schedule is more than I could personally do and I can't see the breeders that I get most of my stock from (when I buy stock) registering all of their animals...so my pedigrees will be completely holey unless I stick within my own stock. If that's the case, my own pedigrees are just as valid that I give out, anyway.



I actually see this thread as two separate issues:

1 - We need to get some "standards" set if we wish to try and have corn snake shows, etc. The standards have more or less been started in Chuck's book, but writing them into "standards" form like they have for the AKC wouldn't be that hard. Many of our morphs are defined solely by their genetics right now (other than the selectively bred morphs like candy cane). Their standard is easy. Anerythrism - an animal homozygous for the Anerythrism (type A) gene which typically results in the loss of erythrins from the skin pigmentation. Much beyond that and you are telling people how they should be breeding their anerys. Bold borders, dark backgrounds, light backgrounds, etc. That's all a matter of preference. We haven't gotten very far in selection on some of those. Those types of morphs are defined by their genetics...period. In that case, setting up a registration for them isn't very difficult. Something along these lines:

(sorry, didn't mean to submit this yet...but I'll leave it and continue on in the next post...)

 

[Hurley]

So, in this example, note that the recognized selectively bred morphs such as Candy Cane are listed as subtypes of Amelanism...but the snake is gentotypically listed as Amel.

The form is simple, and easy check box thing much like in the progeny predictors. You fill in the info you have. It gets people started. It gets the "book" started. It gets historical recording started.

The photos listed were taken from Nancy Swamp's start on organizing a Corn Snake Registry. She had previously said she was striving to have it in place and ready to roll by Feb 2005. I honestly do not know if she is still planning to undertake the project or if she is not.

I think that a minimum of a complete dorsal shot is necessary to ID the animal... I would require a belly shot for bloodreds/stripes/motelys as well. The others I would think would be optional.


OK sorry, got distracted.

2 - The second issue other than "we need standards for shows" is that we need a simple, affordable, pedigree reference system in place for tracing of pedigrees and identification. I've already covered most of this previously in the thread.

So where are we now? Good question. I don't know Nancy's thoughts or how far she got. Supposedly she had forms and logos and applications done or near done, but I don't know. If she no longer wants to get a CSR up and running or is unable to do so, we can get one in place and I think we should. I'd like to hear from her on where she is with this project.

 

[Joejr14]

Hurley and I are going down the same path here.

I just dont see how the financials would work---I'm not even sure if it's possible.

What's the point in the bigger breeders doing this? They've worked long and hard on their name reputation--and thats going to be much bigger than a registration. How would Rich register his 6000 hatchlings? How is Don supposed to register his 4500? On top of that, they're supposed to register all of their breeders and holdbacks? It just doesn't seem feasible.

Smaller breeders arent necessarily going to have even $10 per adult snake to shell out for registration fee.

And, if this whole thing is going to be online---bandwith and sheer space is going to be insanely ridiculous.

Like I said, I think it's a great idea---just not sure how this is gonna work.

 

[Hurley]

As to pedigrees, the format is variable and can be as simplistic or as complex as you want. Simplistic is the AKC's version. No photo's, just text and a few generations of info on the parents and grandparents. AQHA has the same plus a drawing of identification markings for the white areas.

The pedigrees I make for my hatchlings have a photo of the hatchling and a history 2 generations back on the parents. Like this:

In addition, for those interested, I have photos when possible:

In short, you can make it as plain or as colorful as you wish. Complexity certainly would up the cost of production and time involved. I think at minimum we need a test based data base to start...add in a single id photo next and go from there.

Let me just add in here that I by no means think that the CSR has to be like those pages, just showing a range from text only to photos, etc. We just need to get a book open and as many entries as possible in it to make it as valid as possible. No one will ever get this to fly if they are trying to make money at it...not in the corn world. There's too little leeway there, as is. If we could get something simple and effective together that can be done for such a prolific animal to get as many registrants as possible and get costs covered, we'd be doing good.

Something simple.... An ID number, genotype, phenotype, hatch date, sex for each animal. Same info for the mother and father. I'd think that would be enough to get us started.

Have an open call for a year or two for all breeders to get their breeding stock in the book and a year or two of clutches, get the info in the data base so that pedigrees can start to be useful within a few years. Even if it means taking in all the breeder's info, getting it in a data base, and just assigning a number...forget the fancy pedigrees or whatever for now, just get the animals in the database and get it going.

 

[Menhir]

Hurley, that are very good points you got there!

But there is one thing I have to disagree with you:

I was perusing the site and so far, it looks very professional, although there isn't much there yet.

To me, black background yellow borders and a (not that good) collage of reptile photos does not look professional. What they want is being a organication where breeders should register their animals (and that's not for free...) and "they" want to set standards - but the site looks like a private homepage of someone having a fix idea.
Imho, take away the black, make a serious colorchange, a plain but good working logo - no colorfull pictures and "design" stuff. Otherwise I bet that nearly no professional breeder/herper will even take a longer ride through this site.

...just to make that clear, I don't say the site is rubbish or ugly looking - I just say, compare the sites of bigger organisations and you will find a major different design.